JIM HAMILTON, one of the senior members of the Scotland squad, has called on the management to stop unsettling the team by repeatedly changing the line-up after Saturday's Calcutta Cup defeat by England.
This season, Scotland have made 14 changes to the side between World Cup warm-up matches, eight for their first match in that tournament, against Romania, 12 for the meeting with Georgia, five for the Argentina tie, seven for the final group game against England, then eight for the rematch in the RBS 6 Nations Championship on Saturday.
Suspicions that the players have been affected by such apparent fickleness seemed to be confirmed by Hamilton, the lock who has been recalled three times in the course of eight games. "We saw that at the World Cup with all the chopping and changing, guys were unsettled," said the 29-year-old, who won his 35th cap on Saturday.
Growing frustration within the squad was reflected in the apparent questioning of a selection policy very different from the one espoused by Stuart Lancaster after his first game in charge of England.
"I want to make sure people have to work hard to get in the team and you have to prize the shirt," said the England coach, who required stitches in a hand wound after punching a light when Charlie Hodgson scored the game's only try. Lancaster also acknowledged his team will have to improve hugely if they are to contest the Championship title, but his elation reflected the fact that winning is what matters.
The corollary of that is that there was little satisfaction to be taken by the Scots from performing well for periods. "I'm not in this for anything else, I'm in it to win," said Hamilton. "If we'd won by three points without scoring a try I'd have been happy. If and when we score, you'll maybe see us scoring more and more, but it's the story of our lives.
"We have to raise the game for Wales. We've gone down there before and were winning the last game there with three minutes to go. That's one thing about us, there will be a reaction. We're cheesed off with the result today but there has to be a reaction, we have to produce something, for the fans, Scotland as a nation, the players and everyone involved with us, families, media, needs to see a big reaction from us."
Those sentiments were echoed by Dave Denton, whose family had flown over from Zimbabwe to see him win the man of the match award on his championship debut, but who felt he had left the stadium with the wrong prize after England's captain Chris Robshaw, who was also making his first Six Nations appearance, picked up the Calcutta Cup.
"I was happy with my own performance but the most important thing is for us to get a win. I'd be a lot happier if we had won rather than with my getting man of the match," he said.
With more than half the squad requiring some sort of medical care yesterday they will be grateful for having an extra recovery day ahead of a visit to Wales, who got their campaign off to a magnificent start with a win against pre-tournament Triple Crown favourites Ireland in Dublin yesterday.
Along with Richie Gray, Alastair Kellock and Nick De Luca, Denton was among four players described as having more significant knocks than the others, all of them suffering from dead legs.
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